Sunday, March 13, 2011

The Georgia-Washington game will be the final one in the Charlotte bracket, and will follow the North Carolina-Long Island game, which will start at 7:15 p.m.

It's also scheduled to be on CBS, and be broadcast by Jim Nantz and Clark Kellogg. That's the network's A-team, almost certainly chosen for Charlotte because of the presence of Duke and North Carolina.

That's going to be quite a pod this weekend: Duke and North Carolina, Bruce Pearl, the Hampton band, and other big state schools Michigan, Washington and Georgia.

7:35 p.m.: NCAA teleconference note

Gene Smith, the selection committee chairman, mentioned road record several times on a conference call just now. So Georgia’s 9-7 record away from home, including 7-4 when taking away neutral sites, helped its case.

Smith was asked about not picking Alabama, said "Alabama was seriously under consideration.” Then the reporter followed up by asking what leaving out an 11-win SEC team said for that league.

“We never look at conference strength. We don’t have a consideration of that," Smith said. "We look at the individual teams, what they did relative to their schedule. We … The SEC’s a great conference, but this is a national tournament. So we look at individual teams and not the conference.”

6:40: More news and notes

For those asking, the game time and television station for Georgia's game on Friday will be announced later.

Also, the bracket is officially announced, and the top teams left out appear to be Alabama, Colorado and Virginia Tech. All of those teams had lower RPI rankings than Georgia, as well as UAB, which may be the biggest surprise in the at-large category.

I tried to tell people that the Alabama-Georgia game last Friday wasn't necessarily a play-in game. So did people like Jerry Palm. Well, that's why I roll with Jerry Palm. And RPI matters. We've been reminded of that again this year.

6:24 p.m.: Some quick facts

According to the Georgia media guide, the Bulldogs have never played Washington in men's basketball. And Georgia and North Carolina last met during the 1998-99 season.

Washington, which made the Pac 10 championship game, is 23-10 this year, and went 11-7 in league play.

6:14 p.m.: Drama ends quickly: Georgia is IN

Georgia is in the NCAA tournament, and gets a No. 10 seed. It will face seventh-seeded Washington.

It will play in Charlotte on Friday, with the winner facing the winner of the North Carolina-Long Island game.

So there you go. Surprised.

6:07 p.m.: First commercial break

The No. 1 seeds were announced and Georgia is not one of them. I know, shocking.

The only thing we did learn pertaining to the Bulldogs is that the "first four" games on Tuesday and Wednesday will be on Tru TV. It also appears that they aren't going to announce the "first four" before the rest of the bracket, so there won't be that instant knowledge.

5:25 p.m.: Mark Fox states his case

Georgia head coach Mark Fox just stated his case for a bid on ESPN’s “bracketology” show.

“I think we have more top 50 wins than North Carolina and people are talking about them being a No. 1 seed today,” Fox said. “We’ve avoided a bad loss, and have a winning record in our league, and hopefully created a resume’ that the committee respects.”

Asked about Alabama, Fox answered that he felt Alabama was a tournament team too. He pointed out the four SEC teams that are locks for the tournament, and mentioned that Georgia finished ahead of one of them (Tennessee) in the standings.

“We’ve done all that we can do, and hopefully done enough,” Fox said. “And all we can control now is just our emotions. And I think these kids are pretty poised and we’ll see what happens.”

5 p.m.: Mr. Blog Man imparts his thoughts

I’m posting this an hour before the start of the selection show – at 6 p.m. on CBS, for the many Georgia fans not used to having a reason to watch. I’ll try to update it as warranted during the show.

I don’t know whether they’re going to announce the Dayton matchups (first four) at the start of the show, or announce those matchups inside the bracket. (As in, “No. 5-seeded Arizona will face the winner of the game between No. 12 seeds Georgia and Clemson.”)

In any case, it will be bad news for the Bulldogs any time they announce one of the following teams: Virginia Tech, Clemson, Alabama, St. Mary’s, VCU, Colorado, Harvard, Southern California.

That is unless, Georgia has been announced already.

My quick pre-selection thoughts: I’m giving Georgia a 60 percent chance of making the field; most likely in one of the play-in games in Dayton, but possibly an 11 or 12 seed that avoids that.

If Georgia does make it, that’s because it did generally what the committee asks in terms of scheduling. The Bulldogs may not have the “wow” factor, but they have a solid RPI and schedule rating, good overall and league records, and avoided the bad loss.

But if the Bulldogs don’t make it, they really have no one to blame but themselves. They had plenty of opportunities to seal up a bid: both Alabama games, home against Vanderbilt, that first overtime against Florida, and against Notre Dame in the Old Spice Classic.

Essentially, Georgia’s bid comes down to whether it’s solid resume’ is enough to overcome its lack of signature wins. We’ll find out shortly.

6 comments:

Can the media types please do away with the "signature win" phrase? I know what it means, but can we get away from using that label to describe a key win.

Seth, by the way...I applaud you for your good work and preserverance on the blog. You've come around very well since last summer...and we always appreciate the work you occasionally dig up while other beat writers sit on their arses.

Advertisement

Search Top Blogs...

Subscribe To

My Latest Tweets

Twitter Updates

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Seth Emerson has been covering the SEC and Georgia (on and off) since 2002. He worked at the Albany Herald from 2002-05, then spent five years at The State in Columbia, S.C., covering South Carolina. He returned to Athens in August of 2010, only to find that David Pollack and David Greene were no longer playing for the Bulldogs. Adjustments were made. Emerson is originally from Silver Spring, Md., and graduated from Maryland in 1998 with a degree in journalism and a minor in getting lost on the way to practically everywhere. Then he spent four years at The Washington Post, covering small colleges, a couple NCAA basketball tournaments, and on one glorious day, was yelled at by Tony Kornheiser. It was probably at The Post that he also learned to write in the third person.These days he lives in Athens with his beloved and somewhat wimpy dog, Archie. Together they fight crime at night in northeast Georgia, except on nights there is no crime, in which case they sit at home, sip on white wine and watch reruns of "Mad Men."